Sunday, December 27, 2015

Return to Bethlehem?

Shall we return to Bethlehem
And take again the narrowed way
Descending through the dark of things
Toward that distant, alien day?

Shall we put off our modern cloth,
Our blithe superiority
The arrogance that laughs too loud
At yesterday’s antiquity?

Shall we become like kids again
Discard our adult heresy
That we were made the measurers,
And what we know is what must be?

Shall we be willing to let go
Of the braced walls of human pride
Sophistication’s coolest front
Behind which prop we cower, hide?

Shall we return? Oh let it be,
We trace our footsteps back again
To where the Lord God writhed in hay,
That busy night in Bethlehem.

Shall we in being be renewed
By learning to kneel in the dirt
Believing that this child alone
Is the lone healer of our hurt?

Can we believe? Do we believe,
Who cannot see or taste or hear
That in the darkness of that night
Did light beyond all worlds appear?

And do we know (for we can know).
The one whose birth made angels sing
Has walked our darkest human hells
And now is conqueror and King?

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